Research Summary:Eric A. Smith is professor of Anthropology at the University of Washington. His primary research over the last several years has involved a long-term study of a population of Torres Strait Islanders on Mer, in Queensland, Australia, conducted in collaboration with Rebecca Bliege Bird and Douglas W. Bird (both currently at Stanford University). This study focuses on the interrelations between economic activities (especially marine subsistence harvests), status politics, gender roles, and reproductive outcomes. Though a small population (ca. 430), it could be completely censused, and extensive information collected on household composition, division of labor, marine harvests, individual status in various domains (political, economic, social), and mating and reproductive decisions. This has facilitated testing a number of competing hypotheses to explain status competition, sexual division of labor, resource access, collective action, mate choice, and reproductive success. Results to date (published in a number of anthropological and biological journals) indicate that standard views of the sexual division of labor and of generosity in resource sharing fail to account for our data. This may have broad implications for understanding the evolution of both economic and mating strategies in our species, and certainly for interpreting the ethnographic and historical record on variation in these areas. Anthropological demographers have established that reproductive success (number of surviving offspring) covaries with status in all pre-demographic transition societies for which data are available, and this research confirms this yet again. In addition, however, it has uncovered some of the avenues through which this covariation works (primarily assortative mating), thus linking this finding to theoretical arguments in evolutionary ecology and economics concerning honest signaling of underlying qualities.
A new research project focuses on using evolutionary game theory and agent-based modeling to analyze alternative pathways to the development of hierarchical political organization and institutionalized economic inequality. The aim is to develop a clearer understanding of the causal processes and dynamics involved in the transition from egalitarian to hierarchical social systems in human history. This work grew out of a sabbatical (partially funded by NSF) as a visiting scholar at the Santa Fe Institute, under the auspices of the Behavioral Science Program at SFI directed by Sam Bowles, and is being conducted in collaboration with economist and game theorist Jung-Kyoo Choi (SFI and Seoul University).
Recent Publications:- Smith, E., (2008), Before Darwin.(Cover story), The Scientist, 22: 6, 32(7).
- Smith, E. A., (2007), Reconstructing the evolution of the human mind, The Evolution of Mind : Fundamental Questions and Controversies, Gangestad, S. W.; Simpson, J. A., 53-59, Guilford Press, New York.
- Smith, E. A., (2007), More obstacles on the road to unification, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 30: 1, 41.
- Smith, E. A.; Choi, J.-K., (2007), The emergence of inequality in small-scale societies: Simple scenarios and agent-based simulations, Modeling Socioecological Systems, Kohler, T.; Leeuw, S. v. d., SAR Press, Sante Fe.
- Bliege Bird, R.; Smith, E. A., (2005), Signaling theory, strategic interaction, and symbolic capital, Current Anthropology, 46: 2, 221-248.
- Smith, E. A., (2005), Why do good hunters have higher reproductive success?, Human Nature, 15: 4, 342-363.
- Smith, E. A.; Bird, R. B., (2005), Costly signaling and cooperative behavior, Moral Sentiments and Material Interests: On the Foundations of Cooperation in Economic Life, Gintis, H., MIT Press, Cambridge.
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Ph.D. 1980, Cornell University. Ecological adaptation, evolutionary demography, reproductive strategies, arctic Canada and tropical Australia.
